Non-Breakfast Eaters Beware

It turns out that the old adage “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is still as valid as ever. A new study claims that those who skip breakfast have a 27% higher chance of dying of a heart attack or coronary heart disease than those who didn’t. The study which appeared in the journal Circulation took into account almost 27,000 men with varied lifestyles including smokers, non-smokers, those who exercise regularly and those that don’t. The research found the same result over the 16 year period.

It’s unclear as to why breakfast is so beneficial but the study author, Harvard Research Fellow Leah Cahill says “When you prolong fasting by skipping breakfast you can put a strain on the body. “And over many years … it can lead to insulin sensitivity, which can lead to [type-2] diabetes, [and] it can lead to high blood pressure,” she says, which over time can lead to heart disease.

It may also relate to the bodies circadian rhythms:

For a very long time we thought that light is the cue that resets the brain clock,” says , an associate professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute. “But slowly we are learning that actually it’s food that’s the biggest cue to reset the clock.” He says the resetting of the clock is key since it helps our bodies perform optimally. If you change the timing of food on different days, then the clock is not getting the same cue everyday Panda says, so “the clock goes haywire and our body becomes less efficient in processing the food.” Source: NPR

Did you ever make a habit of skipping breakfast? How did it affect you?

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2 comments on “Non-Breakfast Eaters Beware”

I wouldn’t be a proper skeptic if I didn’t wonder whether other factors were taken into consideration: career field and stress level, primarily. And why only men? Though the insulin sensitivity makes sense.

And I am…not a good breakfast eater. Food in the morning often makes me queasy.

It’s good to be skeptical since we so often get conflicting info. That said, it sounds like a long term study which gives it some credibility. Why they only studied men though makes no sense to me. Thanks for the comment!